Fear: A Gone Novel

Orc back in the old days. Back when Orc was Orc. Even now he saw Orc’s eyes narrow—they were one of the few remaining human parts of him. Orc was a slag heap of living gravel with a patch of human skin where his mouth and part of one cheek were.
    Howard almost wished Orc would get up and pound him. At least he’d be Orc again. Instead Orc narrowed his eyes and said, “You know, there’s a lot more rabbits than there are coyotes.”
    “Why are the girls getting Sam?” Howard glanced back toward the marina, the center of life at the lake. Sure enough, Sam, Jezzie, and Sinder were coming along at a quick walk.
    “‘Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice,’” Orc read in his slow, laborious way.
    “You want to ask me what that means, Orc?” Howard snapped. “Because I think justice may not be something you want to see so much.”
    Orc’s face wasn’t capable of showing much emotion. But Howard could see that the shot had hit home. In a drunken rage Orc had accidentally killed a kid back in Perdido Beach. No one but Howard knew about it.
    “What’s that?” Howard asked, pointing. He had just noticed a discoloration of the dome behind Orc.
    “That’s why they went for Sam.”
    At that moment Sam and the girls came up. Sam nodded to Howard and said, “Orc, how’s it going?”
    Sam went straight to the barrier and stood looking at the black peak thrusting up behind Orc’s rock.
    “Have you seen this anywhere else?” Sam asked Sinder.
    “We never go anywhere else,” Sinder said.
    “I appreciate the time you put in,” Sam said. But he wasn’t paying any attention to Sinder or Jezzie. He walked along the barrier toward the lake.
    Howard fell in beside him, relieved that Sam hadn’t spotted his backpack.
    “What do you think it is?” Howard asked.
    “There. Another one.” Sam pointed at a much smaller dark bump rising from the dirt. He marched on and they reached the lake’s edge. Here again was a low, undulating ridge of black stain.
    “What the…,” Sam muttered. “You see anything like this, Howard?”
    Howard shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t notice it. Anyway, I don’t walk by the barrier that much.”
    “No,” Sam agreed. “You just go back and forth to your still at Coates.”
    Howard felt a sudden chill.
    “Of course I know about your still,” Sam said. “You know it’s on the other side of the line. It’s Caine’s territory. He catches you over there, you won’t like it, unless you’re sharing your profits with him.”
    Howard winced and decided to say nothing.
    Sam stood looking at the stain. “It’s growing. I just saw it grow. Just now.”
    “I saw it, too,” Sinder said. She looked to Sam for reassurance. Weird, Howard realized: he, too, was looking to Sam for reassurance. As much as he and Sam had been enemies at times, and still were, more or less, he wanted Sam to have some quick answer to this stain thing.
    The troubled look on Sam’s face was not reassuring.
    “What is it?” Howard asked again.
    Sam shook his head slowly. His tanned face looked suddenly so much older than his barely fifteen years. Howard had a vision of Sam as an old man, hair gray and thin, face creased with deep worry lines. It was a face marked by all the pain and worry Sam had endured.
    Howard had the sudden, ridiculous urge to offer Sam a drink. He looked like he could use it.

SEVEN
36 H OURS , 19 M INUTES
    ASTRID STOOD GAZING down at the lake from the heights to the west. The barrier went straight into the lake, of course, cutting it roughly in half. The lake’s shoreline bulged out so that she could no longer keep following the barrier without going out of her way. Anyway, soon it would be too dark to see the stain. Time to turn toward the human habitations.
    The sun was down and a small, far-off bonfire was burning in a circle of tents and trailers. Astrid couldn’t see the kids around the fire, but she could see shapes occasionally crossing in front of the flames.
    Now that she was here she could no longer even pretend to suppress her emotions. She was going to see Sam. Others, too, and she would no doubt have to endure stares and greetings and probably insults.
    All that she could handle. But she was going to see Sam. That was the thing. Sam.
    Sam, Sam, Sam.
    “Stop it,” she told herself.
    A crisis was coming. She had a duty to help her friends understand it.
    “Weak,” she muttered.
    The suspicion had been growing in her head that she was just coming